After my first night out, I woke up on Saturday morning, now 2 days since arriving, feeling pretty awful. I still had no phone connection or way to get in touch with anyone, so I decided to spend the weekend to myself, getting to know where I now called home.

All of a sudden, a super old Lada came from a side alley, drove up, and parked across the footpath in front of us. Two super drunk Russian dudes got out of the car, started shouting and yelling, and got out a bottle of whiskey from the back seat. I was super confused, as everything was happening in Russian, and from what I understood, none of the guys or girls we were with knew who these 2 dudes were, but hey, whatever, they had whiskey.
And so, as you do at midnight, in a dark alley in an unknown city, we all got super excited and stood in this big circle drinking these guys' whiskey from the bottle.

It was Friday. The morning after I arrived.
The previous night, having no shower, or no food or drink in my apartment, I unpacked my bags and tried to place things away. I put up some photo's of family and friends and places on my wardrobe with some blu-tac (which became quite a novelty with my students), and made my sofa bed up. Then I sat down. And thought 'what the hell have I done.' Where was I, what was I doing, why was I here?

I did something pretty strange last year. I'd been to Russia twice, once in 2014 to Moscow, and a second time to the Far East and Siberia in 2015. After this second visit, I came home with a desire to find some sort of way to be able to live in Russia. 3 months later…Read more Why I’m doing this

So as I mentioned, in around June I had an offer letter and contract signed to teach English in Volgograd, Russia. I knew nothing about this city in its current form. What I did know however was that the city was previously known as Stalingrad. The site of one of the bloodiest battles the world…Read more Post #1. Moving to Russia. November, 2015.